


for what it's worth, it was worth all the while

by phangirlingforphan



Series: Interactive Introverts (the tour fics) [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Reality, Romance, interactive introverts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 08:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14828744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phangirlingforphan/pseuds/phangirlingforphan
Summary: UK tour is over and Europe calls. Snippets and musings from the Interactive Introverts tour.-He manages maybe one or two hours of sleep.When Dan wakes up, bright-eyed and smiling, Phil says he slept fantastically and takes the coldest shower he can to make it look like that could be the case.





	for what it's worth, it was worth all the while

**Author's Note:**

> here we go again, UK over, now onto the rest of Europe! I will try and do more than three for this series I promise hahahaha unlike my last one...

Phil doesn’t manage to get a lot of sleep the night before they fly to Amsterdam. 

In total opposite, Dan is beside him, practically dead to world. He’s even snoring a little, duvet half slung over his legs, bare torso out and arm stretched towards Phil. Dan always snores when they’ve been drinking a little. That, combined with the somewhat drunken love-making they just had has called for a deep, much-needed sleep, so Phil can forgive the snores.

He stares up at the ceiling, at the shafts of moonlight filtering through the slats in the blinds. 

It’s one of those nights where his brain won’t give in. He’s got these incessant thoughts scrambling his mind, shouting at him to the extent where he feels a little delirious from it all.

Then again, that might be the lack of sleep.

He glances back to Dan whose face is pressed into the pillow quite comically with his jaw slack and smiles. He doesn’t know if it’s silly to have the mindset that as long as Dan’s okay, he’s okay, and he doesn’t really care. Dan is sleeping and is content and doing the best he has for a few weeks and Phil is almost there, something he’s fine with. 

It’s not the flight to the Netherlands that’s bothering him. He can’t get over how quickly the first part of this tour has gone, a tour he argued against even having in the first place, and now suddenly he’s committed to flying across the whole world for until October.

- 

_“We had plans, we had things we want to do and here we go again having it all put on hold to go on tour,” Phil argues, “It’s not fair,”_

_Dan lets out a groan of frustration, “We have time, Phil, loads of it, for all of that other stuff,” Dan’s voice falters on the last word, and from the way Phil recoils at it, he knows he’s messed up._

_“Stuff?” Phil repeats, incredulous, “Getting married, having time together alone, relaxing and not working. That’s just ‘stuff’ to you is it? I’m glad to know our relationship is considered as stuff to you, Dan.”_

_“Don’t twist my words, you know what the fuck I meant,”_

 -

The fight wasn’t their finest moment. Phil stands by his words, he apologised if he overreacted, and he still feels somewhat hurt.

They made up, they compromised, they moved on. It happens. Phil might be exaggerating when he says he was ‘against’ the tour, he figures he’d only hoped they would relax for a while, focus on their life, not the other life created by YouTube where he can feel two-dimensional. 

They have their personal life and their work life and there’s a big, thick line between the two which they only let blur every now and again. The world doesn’t know about their future plans. Sure, their viewers speculate and theorise, some theories are scarily accurate and others are laughable, but their private life is exactly that: theirs, and Phil wants nothing more than to revel in and enjoy that.

He manages maybe one or two hours of sleep. 

When Dan wakes up, bright-eyed and smiling, Phil says he slept fantastically and takes the coldest shower he can to make it look like that could be the case. 

-

“Planes are weird,”

Dan doesn’t look up from his phone. “Your mum’s weird,” he says.

“Touché,” Phil says, “But if she wasn’t I might have been very normal and how dull would life have been for you?” 

Dan’s eyes narrow. He looks at Phil. “Well for starters I’d be able to enjoy this plane journey and listen to FKA Twigs in peace without someone telling me planes are weird,” 

“Exactly,” Phil says, triumphant. “Dull,”

Dan shifts in his seat, grimacing. “I forgot how uncomfortable airplane seats are,” 

“Well you chose this tour, so you gotta put up with it,” Phil says. It’s an offhand comment, he doesn’t have a hint of malice in it but from the sour look on Dan’s face, it’s been taken completely the wrong way. 

“I think you’ll find we both chose to do this, Phil,” Dan says, “Unless you’re changing your mind again. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy here,”

Phil does his best to not raise his voice, too aware there are plenty of people on this flight, he doesn’t want an audience or an argument.

“I wasn’t referring to that argument, thank you very much. No need to bring it up, Dan,” he remarks, albeit a little scathingly.

Without a word, Dan turns to look out of the window and all Phil can hear is the hum of the plane’s engine and the sudden high-volume of music coming from his headphones. 

-

“What was that?” Dan asks. Their suitcases have been unceremoniously plopped onto the hotel room floor, the mini-fridge has been raided for post-flight snacks and Phil’s already sprawled on the bed, on his phone scrolling through a TripAdvisor list of best things to see in Amsterdam.

Dan sits next to him, staring. 

“What was what?” Phil replies, absent. 

“You know what. On the plane, mister ‘you chose this tour’ and all that other bullshit,”

Phil puts his phone aside and sits up. “I made a comment, it wasn’t a dig at you,” he says.

“It implied there was something wrong,” Dan says, “What was it?” he repeats, “I’m not a fucking mind-reader, Phil,”

 Dan’s expression tells Phil that he isn’t about to let up. They so rarely argue that whenever they’re on brink of it, Phil feels his throat shrivel up and tighten in protest. He’s one of those people whose prone to cry when they’re too angry or frustrated, a quirk in his personality that he loathes. He can feel his throat thickening already.

 “Can we just drop it, please? I don’t want to argue with you,” he mutters quietly.

Phil shuffles away from the bed and swings his legs off it, standing up. “Let’s go explore. Come on, I’ve never been to Amsterdam, I want to see things and I really could do with a coffee,”

 “Phil - ”

 “No,” Phil says, close to shouting. He waits by the door, hand hovering over the handle. “I’m not annoyed or fed up or anything, I’m fine. Now, are you coming?”

Dan opens his mouth and then closes it. He wants to protest, to get to the bottom of whatever this is, but he also wants to enjoy spending time in Amsterdam and with Phil.

He stands up and reaches for his wallet, shoving it into his pocket.

“Yeah,” he says, an edge of defiance tinging his voice. “Yeah, I am.” 

- 

Amsterdam is gorgeous. The skies are a little iron cast, but with the forefront of the most aesthetically pleasing architecture Dan’s witnessed and the river running beside them as they amble down the cobbled streets, the colour of the sky doesn’t seem so significant. 

Phil takes an Instagram Story photo of Dan as he’s taking his own and captions it ‘AMSTERDAN’ in an act of what he feels was an excellent pun he knows he’ll use multiple times. 

Dan sees it and scoffs, grinning nevertheless. 

A few fans stop them, they give hugs, Phil provides animated conversation and Dan offers to take some photos with them.

As soon as they walk away, he notices Dan’s smile drop into a flat line. 

They find a coffee shop beside the river and sit outside with them. The sound of the water quells some of the anger Phil’s been holding onto, that combined with laughing at Dan’s cappuccino moustache loosens the knot in his stomach.

“How’s that matcha latte working for you, Phil Lester,” Dan asks, laughing at the face of disgust Phil’s making every time he takes a sip. 

“Green tea in coffee is a mistake. A big mistake. Coffee should not be made green, it’s unnatural,” 

“Yet you ordered it,” 

“Try new things?” he offers, weakly.

Dan laughs loudly, dimples showing and all. It's nice, and needed.

“I’m sorry if I’ve been a twat,” Phil says after a moment.

“It’s okay,” Dan says, shrugging. “I wish you’d talk to me, though, when you’re unhappy or whatever, I kinda hoped by now, after everything, we’d be in a place where we do that automatically,”

“I’m not...angry that we’re doing a tour,” Phil says, choosing his words carefully, “I think I was put out that we keep having to wait to do other things we want to do. I didn’t react in the best way when you broached the idea,” 

Over the lip of his mug of coffee, Dan rolls his eyes as he takes a sip which Phil let’s slide. He knows he’s been an asshole lately, he deserves it.

“But you need to know I’m in this tour one-hundred percent. I let my silly anxieties get in the way, it was stupid,” 

Dan puts his mug down and leans his chin on his hand, elbow against the table. “I understand that your way of dealing with things that annoy you or whatever is to shut me out until you can explain yourself properly and I’m not mad about that, I’m not actually mad full-stop, I worry, I guess,” 

“You shouldn’t worry about me, I really wouldn’t want you to,”

Dan shrugs again, “You worry about me, I worry about you. It’d be a bit odd if I didn’t give a fuck about your feelings,”

Phil puts his mug down and pushes it aside quite happily, ready to be rid of the sight of it.

“Shall we go back to the hotel?”

- 

“We have to go and rehearse in twenty minutes,” Dan reminds Phil, who protests in the form of a groan and yanking on Dan’s arm to steer him away from looking at his phone. 

“You’re a needy git, you know that?” Dan says, nonetheless settling back into his previous spot sat between Phil’s legs, head on his chest, Phil’s arms wrapped around his waist.

Phil kisses the top of Dan’s head. “Fuck rehearsals,” he says simply.

“You need to wash your mouth out,”

“Make me,”

Dan swivels around to face Phil who brings his legs down so Dan can straddle them with his own. He leans forward and presses his lips to Phil’s in a soft, slow kiss.

Phil’s hands move from Dan’s waist up towards his head, tangling in his hair.

Dan pulls away momentarily to say, “Are we really making-out like we’re twenty again?” 

“Well, not right now because you’ve stopped,” 

Dan chuckles. “My apologies,”

Phil’s missed this, it’s been a while since they’ve done this just for the sake of it. Whether Dan sees it as some make-up kissing or not, he’s craved this reckless abandonment of responsibility and ignoring the outside world.

Dan swears nobody can kiss as well as Phil Lester. He’s kissed plenty of others, but not much compares to the soft yet extraordinary kisses Phil gives. He’ll be glad to never have to kiss anybody else for the rest of his life.

They end up rolling over, Phil above Dan now, legs haphazardly knocking together, chest to chest, lips urgent and teasing against each other. 

Phil peppers kisses to Dan’s jaw, across and down to his neck. Dan’s toes curl at the sensation, and he runs his fingers underneath Phil’s t-shirt, gripping at the bare skin on his back. 

Phil’s hand is palming at his crotch, grazing over the denim of his jeans and causing ripples of warm in Dan’s stomach. The effect is as expected. Dan moans against Phil’s lips.

He wants him so badly.

“It’s not fair to get me extremely horny before we have to rehearse,” Dan gasps. 

Phil’s eyes twinkle. “We have twenty minutes you said, didn’t you?”

“I can’t argue with that logic,” Dan says, and promptly pulls Phil’s t-shirt over his head.

 -

They’re sweaty and sticky, lying beside each other holding hands and finding their breath again.

“I need to shower. I feel disgusting,” Dan complains. 

“Can I join you?”

Dan looks bewildered. “I don’t even know if I can do another round of that. Where’s all this coming from? 

Phil grins, turning onto his side and tracing his fingers over Dan’s chest. “I just find my boyfriend rather sexy, is that a crime?” 

“Definitely not a crime, but are you not meant to be the one struggling to keep up with me?” 

Phil frowns. “I resent that,”

Dan laughs and sits up, stretching mechanically.  “I really do need to shower,” 

“Why bother? We’re only going to get extra sweaty later,” 

Dan raises an eyebrow, “That’s very presumptuous of you, Phil,:

Phil laughs hard, shaking his head. “No, no, no, I genuinely meant because of rehearsal. But, heck, we can do that again too, why not?”

-

Rehearsal ends, they go back to the room, have that shower Phil so keenly requested and order more room service than is probably necessary.

The crew asked them if they wanted to go out for food, but Dan passed it off, saying something about them being too tired although he was certain he was as transparent as a sheet of glass.

The food arrives and they gorge themselves on sticky rice and sweet and sour chicken. It's just them in their pyjamas with food everywhere.

"It's just like we're at home if you ignore we're in Amsterdam," Phil comments, sticking another forkful of rice in his mouth.

"We're sticking to the branding, too. Go to a new country and we still don't interact with people and stay indoors anyway,"

"Wouldn't want it any other way, though,"

At that, Dan feels it's the right time to re-hash over their previous conversation slash argument.

"You know that our plans are still valid, right?" he says.

Phil puts his fork down. "I do, yeah,"

"And I'm not putting them on hold because I don't want to do any of that stuff,"

"Dan, I never said you were, I was just..."

"Getting bored of waiting?"

Phil smiles wryly. "Yeah, a little,"

Dan matches the smile, "Same here, I guess I felt we had to do a few more things first before we thought about us. Which sounds kinda fucked up in hindsight, really,"

"It isn't," Phil shakes his head, "It's sweet, for the fans, and kind of for us, because we love travelling and the thrill of being on stage and all that, I suppose I'm impatient to, what's the word for it?"

"Settle?" Dan supplies.

"Yeah, settle. I'm ready to be a settled, domestic husband who has three dogs and does gardening and reads the newspaper every weekend with you," 

"And we will get there, I promise we will. I want all of that too," Dan says, "Although maybe not three dogs, that might be a lot if we ever have kids,"

Phil grins, "One day, eh?"

"One day," Dan repeats with a nod, the same grin on his face too. "Now, hurry up and eat your rice, it's going to go cold,"

"I love you, you know," 

Dan looks at Phil, his hair in disarray, the rice he's gotten all over the bedspread and the stain from the sweet and sour sauce he's dolloped on his pyjama bottoms and sighs. It's a happy sigh.

"I love you too,"

"Good, now we've got that sorted can I steal one of your spring rolls please?"

**Author's Note:**

> pls leave kudos/comments if you enjoyed this, they mean a lot and keep me going!


End file.
